Flathead Lake Monster® Inc.

You don't have to go to Loch Ness to search for a lake monster. Montana has its own "Nessie" in Flathead Lake. At least that's what folks have been saying since 1889 when it was viewed from the lake steamer U.S. Grant, skippered by Capt. James C. Kerr. At first the whale-like object was thought be an approaching boat. A rifle-toting passenger fired at it and apparently missed, but it scared the fish - or whatever it was - away.

Sporadic appearances have been viewed by scores of people since then. Documented sightings were reported in the early 1900s, 1912, 1919, 1922-23, 1934, 1937, 1939, and in every decade since.

Among the more interesting reports came from a sighting July 10, 1949, when a Polson couple and four children saw a big fish near the Narrows. It appeared about 150 feet away from them with about a six-ft. length of its back showing. They watched it for about 30 seconds as it swam southeasterly, rolling out a wake six to eight inches high as it gradually submerged. They thought it to be a sturgeon about ten to twelve feet long. The man, incidentally, later became a Montana State Fish and Game Commission chairman.

Most numerous sightings were reported in 1993 - nine of them. On July 29, about 1:30 p.m., a vacationing Illinois policeman and his wife and three kids all witnessed a "nessie" as it surfaced about 50 yards away from their boat in calm waters off the north side of Wild Horse Island. The big fish - or whatever - appeared amid an apparent school of bait-sized fish. It swam past their boat about a hundred yards away but was easy to follow visually because of the wake. The policeman described the object as shiny with a bowling ball-sized head, shiny humps, about15-20 feet long. Looked kind of like two seals swimming.

A couple weeks earlier - on July 13, off Woods Bay - a Seattle bank officer and a district sales manager managed to snap off a few seconds of video footage. Although inconclusive, the video showed a dark shape near the surface. The sales manager before he got the film rolling said he saw the nessie's eyes and sturgeon-like head, but that the body seemed to be more like that of a large eel - at least 12 feet long.

Sightings over the years have been made in all parts of the lake, at all times of the year, and by a wide variety of people - including professionals, teachers, military officers, farmers, ranchers, business people, mill workers, tourists of all ages.

What might have cleared up the mystery only tended to deepen it. That occurred on May 28, 1955, when the late C. Leslie Griffith claimed to have latched onto a big sturgeon near Dayton and finally managed to gaff it several miles down lake, off Big Arm State Park, after an epic five tussle. The 7-1/2 ft., 181-lb white sturgeon can be seen in the Polson-Flathead Historical Museum. Skeptics claimed the fish may have been pulled from the lake, but they theorized it might have been trucked in from elsewhere.

However, sworn court testimony stated the fish was caught in Flathead Lake. A dispute over ownership of the sturgeon and distribution of monetary proceeds from showing it arose between Griffith and Big Fish Unlimited, Inc. The case went all the way to the Montana Supreme Court which upheld a district court finding that ownership was retained by BFU but that Griffith was entitled to a share of the display proceeds.

You can read more about the Flathead Lake Monster in Montana Nessie, $3.70 postpaid from Treasure State Publishing Co., Box 1352, Polson, MT 59860. Also available is a complete, updated log of sightings for $4 postpaid, same address.

--Paul Fugleberg